


Kingslayer

by TeamGwenee



Series: The Kingslayer's Captive [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25095475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamGwenee/pseuds/TeamGwenee
Summary: What happens when Jaime stands guard over the King and his new queen.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: The Kingslayer's Captive [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814104
Comments: 9
Kudos: 67





	Kingslayer

Sansa Stark was a true Ice Queen of the North. Exquisite in white satin and silver lace, with intricate pale blue embroidery. Seed pearls were sewn into the overwrought braids of her flaming red hair. Crowned with a coronet wrought of white gold, with moonstones and diamonds that flashed brilliantly in the candlelight. Pure and sparkling and frozen in terror. 

_Her hair is too big for her head,_ Jaime observed. 

Her tiny body should be drooping beneath the weight of it. From his place at Joffrey’s side, Jaime could see the tiny queen bow her head and hunch her shoulders, before a beaming Joffrey would dig his fingernails into her wrist and she would stand upright once more, a smile so wide fixed onto her face it was a wonder her skin did not rip. 

_His son,_ Jaime thought in disgust. He struggled to understand even a man like himself could have poduced a monster like that.

He never loved Joffrey. Before he was born, Jaime and Cersei belonged utterly to each other. But then Joffrey was placed onto Cersei’s breast and a part of her was lost to Jaime forever. It had been easy to resent the boy, easy to accept he could never be a father to him and keep a distance. Easier still when the squalling infant became a vicious, poisonous little beast. 

There were times when Myrcella’s wit and Tommen’s kindness had made Jaime wonder what it would have been like to have claimed them as his own, before he quickly took himself away from those unwise speculations. It would amount to nothing, and would only cause grief to dwell on what might have been.

Joffrey was never a cause for such temptation.

“Protect her,” Brienne whispered beneath the music, looking almost pretty in the low candlelight. “Keep her safe.”

It was a reasonable request. Jaime was a knight, and so many of the knight’s vows called upon him to keep the Stark child from harm.

Protect the young, protect the innocent, protect women. Protect his Queen.

But obey his King.

So many vows. 

~

Stood on guard duty in the King’s outer-chamber, time could have faded. Jaime was fourteen once more, protecting a monster.

Sansa had been near silent for most of her wedding, speaking only to say her vows, opening her mouth only where spoken to. And everything in a whisper.

Her screams were loud.

Louder than the sound of fists hitting skin, louder than Joffrey’s growls that she had shamed him with her petulance. 

She cried out for Joffrey to stop, she cried he was hurting her. She cried for ‘Mother’.

Was it the Mother she cried for, or her own mother murdered at the hands of her husband’s family. Either way, none were coming to save her.

_You swore to protect the innocent._

_You swore to obey your king._

Jaime’s only regret after killing Aerys wasn’t doing it sooner.

Jaime couldn’t remember walking into Joffrey’s bedchamber. All he knew was that when he came out, his sword was dripping with the blood of his son. 

~

Alys was a simple chambermaid, who knew nothing of politics and the strange games the lords played. She only stepped into the King’s outerchamber to lay a fire for the morning, when she saw Ser Jaime Lannister dazed and covered in blood.

Alys knew nothing of politics, but she knew the name Kingslayer, she knew him to be Tywin’s son, and she knew the wrath Tywin could bring down on a city.

The Kingslayer raised his eyes and met her gaze, smiling.

_he and brienne were dancing but an hour ago._

Alys put down her logs and backed out of the chamber.

Tywin Lannister had returned to his study early, once the King had been bedded. The rest of the court continued with its merry making, their celebrations growing louder and more debauched the longer the night spilled on, ale and wine overflowing from every cup.

He had not called for a chambermaid to tend to him, and he was not accustomed to being interrupted at some serving Wench’s whim. But when she revealed what she had seen, all roth at her impudence vanished as he called for Kevan to take some trusted men and seal off the King’s chamber. No one was to enter or leave on pain of death. 

Poor Queen Sansa was to remain locked in with her husband’s corpse a little while longer.

Alys watched the King’s Hand, how efficiently and brutally he gave his orders. He would not allow his son to fall foul of the headsman.

“M’lord,” she said timidly as the guards made to depart, “I believe I might have, it is possible I heard another voice, from within the King’s bedroom. A man, crying out in pain.”

She looked up through her lashes to see Tywin Lannister watching her, an inscrutable look on his face.

“Not the King,” she carried. “His voice was deeper. I think….I think it might have been a Northerner. From his voice.” She remembered her courtesies. “If it please m’lord.” 

Evidently it did please him.

“Yes,” Lord Tywin said with a nod. “A Northern rebel who sneaked into the Capital and managed to hide himself in the King’s bridal chamber during the distraction of the wedding.” He turned to his brother. “The man’s body should still be in the King’s Chamber. With the wound my son struck him, he could not have survived long.”

~

Cersei looked like a corpse in her grief. Her eyes circled in black, her cheeks hollow, skin pale and sallow against the darkness of her gown. The candles surrounding her son’s corpse threw ghastly shadows over her weary face.

“It was Sansa,” she told Jaime with a cold certainty. “That little bitch murdered our son. Oh, she looks the innocent, with her pretty manners and simpering smiles, but she has always been a conniving little snake. She betrayed her own father to get a crown, and now she has murdered her husband. My boy.”

Jaime cast an eye at the Dowager Queen, swathed in gauzy black veils. To hide the bruises Joffrey had gifted to her, or from the smile from the gift of his death? 

Lord Tywin had decreed the Dowager Queen Sansa would be given an annuity of two thousand dragons a year, as befit the widow of a king, on the grounds she did not marry.

“Sansa Stark has the strength to weiled an embroidery needle, not a sword,” Jaime pointed out.

“Joffrey was killed on her behalf!” Cersei hissed. “She planned it all. She killed our boy.”

_No my sweet sister,_ Jaime thought, _Sansa didn’t kill our boy. I did._

“Father is giving her a fortune. She is free and she is wealthy and she will be served on a bent knee and called your Grace.” Cersei spat. “If you were a proper man, you would bring justice to our son and take up your sword.

_If I were to bring you justice, Cersei, I had better fall on my sword than take it up._

Jaime longed to reach out and comfort her, but he would not do her the dishonour of being soothed by her son’s murderer.

“You know I will not,” Jaime said simply.

“You would have once,” Cersei snarled. “Before you lost your manhood. Get out of my sight. I have no need for you. I have real men serving me. In bed and in battle.”

Jaime took a step back. It was a lie. She said it to hurt him. Cersei was his twin. His other half. His soul.

His soul who would not see his scars, and would not think he would have murdered her boy. 

Oh it was a lie. All of it. Lies and gloves and shadows and stories. Their love was the myth of two selfish, spiteful teenagers who wouldn’t learn.

~

Jaime found Brienne waiting for him in her chamber. 

He did not expect to find the comfort he had come accustomed to in her presence. Did not deserve it. But it pleased him nonetheless to find her, to keep her by his side.

“You cannot remain in the Kingsuard,” Tywin told Jaime as his son looked listlessly at the wall behind him. “This is the third king dead, the second on your watch. And rumours are already spreading. You must step down. Take our men to the Riverlands and see to this Brotherhood.”

“As you wish,” Jaime said without rancour. “On one condition.”

Brienne would be joining him in the Riverlands, if she was agreeable. Tywin cared little for the Wench. Her father’s ransom had bought her life. Let his wretched son do as he pleased with her. 

Brienne was agreeable. Of course she was. She would not abandon her friend in his time of suffering.

“Could you not ask to stay in King’s Landing?” she suggested. “Would you not prefer to support your family in their hour of suffering.”

“Oh Wench, when the Kingslayer is found standing outside his King’s door with blood on his sword, it is better he left the city.”

“Wretched, vile rumours,” Brienne said in disgust. 

Jaime raised an eyebrow, a humourless smile at his lips. 

“Are they?”

Brienne blinked. He could not be saying….

“He was king and my son,” Jaime said, “All the rumours are true. All of them. And do you know, every time I picture his body at my feet, I can feel no regret, nor doubt, nor guilt. Only shame that I feel none of those things. Perhaps I shouldn't. Perhaps it's justice. I brought that vile beast into this world, and I took him out again.”

Brienne’s bones turned cold and a violent shaking overtook her.

Jaime, she knew of his crimes. Knew of his sins. But to murder his own child, without guilt or remorse? Jaime was a kingslayer, and a kinslayer both. Doubly damned before Gods and men.

And what did that make her for loving him?


End file.
